Racial and religious tensions rife in Afghan community

Religious and racial hatred dividing Afghans has been transferred to Melbourne, with one group of refugees saying they are being persecuted by other ethnic Afghans.

Some Hazara Afghans living in Melbourne on temporary protection visas fear that other members of the Afghan community will tell immigration authorities they are not genuine refugees.

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Fahim Fayazi, a Hazara refugee, said he had heard of people who feared talking with non-Hazara Afghans in case they tried to detect a suspect accent that could be taped and reported to the Immigration Department.

"The discrimination (against us) from the non-Hazara community happens because we are different," Mr Fayazi said. "We are Shia (Muslims). They are Sunni (Muslims). We look more like south-east Asians. They look more like Indian people."

Hazara refugee Mohammed Arif Fayazi, who has lived in Melbourne on a temporary protection visa for two years, discussed the issue with caution for fear of creating further tensions, but agreed that Afghan tribal frictions based on religion and race had surfaced here.

"There are good people and bad people in both communities," he said.

The Hazaras, the third-largest ethnic group in Afghanistan, are the only Shia Muslims in a country of Sunnis and have historically been subjected to massacres, most recently by the Pashtun-controlled Taliban.

Afghanistan expert William Maley, from the University of New South Wales, talks of a traditional hatred of the Hazara by other Afghans that has had "all the ferocity (with which) Hitler despised the Jews".

One Afghan community leader admitted to The Age that he had dobbed in Hazaras to the Immigration Department, telling authorities the newcomers did not speak the local dialect, did not know anything about Afghan culture, and urging that they be expelled to free up more places for "real" Afghans.

While many in the wider Afghan community are said to help new arrivals, regardless of their ethnic background, some see the Hazaras as illegals taking visas at the expense of their own relatives and friends.

One non-Hazara Afghan leader told The Age this did not go down well in the non-Hazara community, particularly as they believe many of the Hazaras now being released from detention centres on temporary protection visas were really Pakistanis.

But community leader Wadir Fafi, a Pashtun, who is also a director of the South East Migrant Centre in Dandenong, denied there was discrimination against Hazaras.

He said he knew of nobody who had dobbed in suspect Hazaras. However, he described those who had arrived in Australia by boat in the past two years as illegals and believed the majority were from Pakistan.

"I, as a Pashtun, am proud to offer my service to the Hazara Afghani," Mr Fafi said. "It is the same with other Pashtuns in Melbourne."

The hand of friendship, however, does not extend to those found to be Pakistani. Mr Fafi said perceptions of friction within the wider Afghan community arose from a general tendency among Afghans to disagree.

He said there were 14 Afghan associations in Melbourne, five of them for Pashtuns.

There are estimated to be 800 Hazara Afghans living in Victoria, out of a total Afghan population of almost 3500. They live largely around Dandenong and work in factories, and on building sites and farms.

But the Immigration Department, which believes many could be Pakistani, is now investigating to determine how many may have fraudulently gained visas.